The Evolution to Service-Based Networking

At first glance, it seems clear that the cloud era has fundamentally changed the way we think about networking. We’re now operating outside defined perimeters, and networks can span multiple data centers or clouds. But has networking really changed all that much from the days when everything lived in on-premises data centers? Peter McCarron Peter is a senior product marketing manager for Consul at HashiCorp and based in San Francisco. If he's not studying the best way to discover and manage microservices or talking about cloud-based networking, you'll likely find him discovering real clouds in the great outdoors. After all, it’s still all about establishing consistent connectivity and enforcing security policies. So why does everything seem so different and complicated when it comes to the cloud? To better understand the evolution to modern networking, it’s important to step back and identify the core workflows that have defined those changes, including: Discovering services Securing networks Automating networking tasks Controlling access In this article, we will walk through each of these workflows and talk about how they are combined to achieve a modern service-based networking solution. Since I work at HashiCorp, I’m going to use